5 More Things That Never Happened to Maximum Ride
by billy morph
Summary: How things could have worked out if they had just gone diffently. Again, try and figure out what.


Disclamer: Max's is JP's, the situations are mine though.

5 More Things That Never Happened to Maximum Ride

Blood.

It was everywhere. My clothes were drenched in it. My feathers limp with it. My hair was matted with it. It lay thick under my fingernails which had so recently been claws. I could taste it in my mouth. I could feel it drying in rivulets down my arms. The ground around me was soaked with it. And none of it was mine.

I could hear the breath heavy in my chest. There wasn't anything else to hear. Nothing stirred around me. Everything that hadn't fled was dead. I killed it all.

A body lay before me where I knelt in the mud. Ari's. He was dead. He looked like he had been attacked by a wild animal. Me. Bloody claw marks crisscrossed his torso. Mine. There wasn't much left of his face, but what I could still see was smiling.

I got unsteadily to my feet. Nothing moved, nothing stirred; I'd killed everything. I looked over the corpses of dead Erasers, none looking better than Ari. I could remember it all, clawing, tearing, biting, murdering my way through the hordes of Erasers. I'd enjoyed it.

I spotted a clump of white feathers on the edge of the killing field. Angel. But my eye was drawn by a darker shape lying motionless on the floor. I hurried over, slipping occasionally in pools of blood.

"Fang?" I asked, tenderly shaking his shoulder, ignoring his sightless eyes and the ragged wound in his side. I'd done that.

"You promised Fang," I continued the tears rising in my eyes. "You promised you'd kill me." I put back my head and howled.

The howl of an Eraser

* * *

Jeb collapsed hard against the wall, holding his left shoulder tight, blood seeping through his fingers. I rushed over to try and help him but he waved me away. This was bad, this was bad, this was so bad. The harsh bark of an Eraser sounded on the other side of the door and something started crashing against it, making it rattle in its frame. It wouldn't last long; this was just some abandoned apartment block which we were staying in as we fled from the Erasers. 

"Jeb," I asked panicky. "What can I do?"

"Nothing Maxie," he answered, tightening his gip on his shoulder, the pain clear in his voice. How could I do nothing? Jeb couldn't die, he was the only family I had, the only person I've ever know since he stole me from the lab when I was two. That was four years ago. The door shook again.

"I've got to something," I exclaimed still panicking.

"No!" Jeb roared, I backed away frightened. "Sorry Max," he said in a quieter tone. "There's nothing you can do." He painful reloaded his gun, cocking it and aiming down his arm at the door.

"There's got to be something?" asked desperately. He couldn't die, what would happen to me?

"No Max," he said sadly. "Nothing." I started crying, I was going to lose him, the Erasers were going to tear us apart.

"You're going to have to fly Max," he said as the door splintered.

"But," I said shocked. "You said never to fly."

"Forget what I said," he ordered. "You have to get out of here."

"But, I can't leave you."

"Don't be a hero Max, I'll be fine." That was a lie, I tired to believe it though. A hairy Eraser claw burst through the door and began to scrape around for the handle.

"Go!" Jeb bellowed. I ran to the window and flung it open, tears streaming down my face. I climbed up onto the sill, the door bust open and I launched myself into space, spreading my wings wide.

The gun fired once.

I didn't look back.

* * *

Whispers. 

I could hear them all. All the whispered thoughts, all the half formed plans, all the secrets, all the suffering, all the pain, all the terror, all the loss.

Everything.

The flock were staring at me where I stood frozen, I could hear them too. Fang was worried, Iggy was confused, Nudge and Gazzy were concerned and Angel. Angel was curious.

I wanted to scream, they wouldn't stop. The lady with the baby was going through her shopping list and half wondering whether her husband is _really_ on a business trip. The kid trudging to school was planning the best way to avoid the bullies and seriously considering that no one in the world likes her. The man on the way to the office. The cop just about to finish his beat. Each one flittered briefly across my mind, only to be swept away by a torrent of voices, all demanding to be heard.

"Max!" One voice sounded above the others. I barely registered that as my name, I was lost in a sea of clamouring voices. So much pain, so much hurt, I couldn't cope. How on earth did Angel deal with this?

"Max focus on me!" the voice sounded again, far louder than the others. Angel's. I clung to her voice, like a rock in a storm. She started blasting out images, memories, the time we first flew, our escape day party, when Jeb 'died'. Slowly the other voices faded, an angry hornet's nest buzzing at the back of my mind, but at least they weren't sweeping me away.

"**_And now you know," _**a voice, the voice, said.

The whispers stopped. And I collapsed.

* * *

Fang's sick. 

I can't do anything about it. It's not something medical wise, he's hearing a voice. I shouldn't be surprised really; we've been under a lot of pressure lately, what with Angel being kidnapped and our total failure to find anything relating to the institute.

I looked at Fang, sleeping neatly on the concrete ledge. He didn't look like someone who had just suffered a stroke or something. I don't know what exactly; he was holding his head and moaning a lot so I assume it was bad. Fang never reacts to pain, that's why I can never beat him. Actually he never seems to react to anything, totally emotionless, calm and cool that's Fang. And then he comes out with this incredibly emotional thing like trying to find our parents. Weird.

That brain attack, or whatever it was, must have hurt so bad. I actually thought he was going to hurl at one point and can't even imagine Fang doing anything that ungraceful. But I can't do anything about it, nothing beyond putting my hand on his shoulder and some small comfort that is. I should be able to do something; I'm the second in command, I'm supposed to solve these problems and I don't have a clue how.

Maybe I can't solve it. Maybe it's his DNA breaking down, it happens to all the recombants eventually, you'd think I would be affected first but you never know. No, that can't be happening, Fang's indestructible, nothing can faze him for long.

I sighed deeply, wishing I could believe that, then surveyed the tunnel one last time and tried to get to sleep.

* * *

"Dr Batchelder?" 

I felt a little thrill at those words; two weeks from graduation and there are already people calling me doctor. Of course every other person here's a doctor of something or other but I worked really hard to get that title so it's nice when people use it.

"Yes," I answered getting up, leaving the papers I was reading on my desk. Real fascinating stuff, some of my dad's notes on gene splicing. I mean, you hear on the news about hybrid embryos but these guys were decades ahead of that. And I had a job with them.

"The experiment's ready." Another thrill, I was actually going to meet one of these recombants; and not just one of the unviable ones, a real, working, human hybrid. With wings. I had a bit of a wing fetish when I was fourteen but I grew out of that, then to find out that they made actual winged recombants, lets just say I was more than a little excited. I mean, they don't even let most people ever know about the working recombants for years. I was only getting the chance because my dad had pulled some serious strings.

"Excellent," I said excitedly. I followed the lab assistant out of my office and to the recombant's room. Two of those freaky guards were standing outside the door. I don't get those guys, for one thing they all look identical and as a scientist I know that's totally impossible.

I entered the room. The experiment crouched in her cage, her blond hair hanging limp around her face, her dirty white wings furled loosely at her sides. She regarded me with clear blue eyes meeting my stunned gaze. I don't know what I expected, a beak maybe. Not something, someone, this human. She just looked like a regular adolescent, plus wings. Caged.

This was wrong. I had to get her out of here. But I couldn't, not with the guards and cameras everywhere. I did my tests mechanically, she didn't struggle, not even when I took blood and all animals hate that. She just kept staring at me. I had the eerie felling that she was seeing right through me.

Then just as I went to go she spoke.

"Max," she said quietly. How did she know my name? "Save me."

I fled.


End file.
